


An Old Pain- But the Memory of It!

by bloodymack21



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Major Character Injury, Major character death - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 02:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14728040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodymack21/pseuds/bloodymack21
Summary: Cole is with her in her final moments, despite how she resists.





	An Old Pain- But the Memory of It!

**Author's Note:**

> I replayed the game again for like the 6th time and somehow resisted romancing Solas again. However, all I could think about was those apparent leaks that talk about how your inquisitor will not be the main character in the next game, and I'm just not sure how to feel about that. Her story, especially a romanced Solas story, feels so unfulfilled that the only way I can excuse her not being the main character in the next game would be if she died. So, I killed her. And I tried to think about what would weigh the heaviest on her soul in her final moments and how deeply I would feel departing a world and knowing I was leaving poor lonely Cole behind to pick up the pieces.

When she comes to and manages to peel her eyes open, she immediately recognizes that crows are flying over her.

She knows they’re crows because the last time she was like this, she thought her eyes had gotten damaged by a fireball, until Bull had leaned over her, coaxing her back from the brink. Her eyes had focused, and she’d seen the wings, heard the caws, then gotten back up into the fight.

Shit, these are crows.

She’s on her back, looking up.

They were on the battlefield.

She needed to get up.

“Ahh!” She lets out a sharp gasp in shock, pain ricocheting across the left side of her body.

Her hearing is coming back; she can hear swords clashing with shields, the sounds of screams and shrapnel as a fireball shoots into a crowd somewhere.

But they are distant.

Wherever she lays on the battlefield, she has been left behind.

  
They must have lost sight of her during the battle, none of them would have left her here if they had known she’d fallen. Unless they couldn’t spare the soldiers or thought she was already dead?

  
She tried to move, squirming in the mud and blood beneath her to raise her head to see the battle.

  
Were they winning? Losing? She had to know, had Solas finally appeared on the field?

  
Someone needed to…

  
Her train of thought is cut short by a violent cough that pushes her back to the ground, her limp hand trails across her lips, brushing away the blood.

  
Her right-hand runs down the line of her body, searching for the intrusive sensation that has been increasingly painful as the seconds have passed.

  
She sobs and her hand flinches away when she feels it. The alien sensation of her hand brushing over the skin of her abdomen, armor, and cloth both sundered by a blow, and then the solid object protruding through her flesh, just above her left hip. Her fingers slide through her warm blood as they trace the protrusion.

  
It feels like a rock; it’s sharp and edged but not tailored like a dagger, sword, or axe. Her mind reels with confusion, pain temporarily forgotten as she struggled to recount the last moments before her blackout.

  
She remembered the smell of her lightening casting out around her as elves that she would have once called friends closed in to kill her or take her as a hostage.

  
Wolves circled from afar while part of their pack burned in the Antivan fire bomb she’d thrown.

  
Iron Bull was killing more than she could keep track, Varric whooping and hollering in time with Bianca’s strumming hits, Dorian leaving walls of frozen enemies around them for Blackwall to leave crumbling to their death with a few well-placed shield bashes.

  
Other members had been helping to control the field from afar- Sera and Leliana raining arrows down with the rest of their archers, Cullen commanding their militia, Viv and the rest of the mages circling from the outside to pinch them in.

  
They had been winning.

  
And then she’d heard a crack from the sky above, a sound so familiar yet not one she’d ever felt fear from before.

  
She wasn’t sure how many had been killed in the firestorm Solas had rained down on them, but her fate was sealed the minute the battle moved elsewhere.

  
She felt the pressure of a scream in her throat, her complete helplessness, her betrayal, and pain.

  
He couldn’t even kill her up close. Maker, he probably didn’t even know she’d been at the center of the attack. It felt so insufferably impersonal. She always suspected she would die at some point trying to stop him, but not like this.

  
She’d imagined dying heroically to stop him or to save one of her friends, not bleeding out in a field with half of her body shattered. Useless to her friends and unable to help herself.

  
She cries out, the fingers of her right-hand tearing in the grass beneath it; her only good arm unable to free her.

  
She’s crying, sobbing, and screaming. This is not a dignified way to die. She wouldn’t want her friends to see her like this or for her advisors to know how weak she was in her final moments.

  
But she can’t stop. She thinks of her dead clan, the last of her name dying by the hand of a cursed lover who would so selfishly destroy everything this world has to offer. She cannot die like this.

  
She is so upset she does not hear Cole appear before her but instead, feels it. She feels his soft presence pushing against her mind, and his calming hands fold around her fingers and the back of her neck.

  
When she opens her eyes, she cannot help but smile as she looks upon his face. She had missed him so much, and the irony of his sudden appearance does not surprise her, though it still hurts.

  
The tears bubble up again.

  
“Hush now, it will be easier if you let it be.”

  
“Cole, no, not you. I missed you, but not you and not now.”

  
Cole pauses at that, unsure how to proceed with someone he treasures in his own unique way.

  
“I missed you, too. You have been so sad, I have tried to heal the hurts when I could. But so many people have needed healing lately.”

  
Cole drifts off, eyes falling elsewhere on the battlefield.

  
“I am sorry I could not fight with you. I feel… there is a… ‘Solas smiling down at me, hand on my shoulder, guiding me, protecting me, teaching me to focus, feeling, what I am, where.”

  
A look that could almost be a wince passes across his face, and Lavellan squeezes his hand in comfort.

  
“I know, Cole. I know. It is okay. I would not have wanted you near all this…”

  
She trails off as another bloody coughing fit leaves her weak and dizzy.

  
They sit in silence as her breathing deepens. She feels almost relaxed now, despite the anger and pain. Like she’s slipping into a warm bath after a very frustrating day. Her mind refuses to slow down despite her bodies clear exhaustion.

  
She starts to cry again, but this time it is for Cole. For the loss of a friend who will have to witness so many he cares about continue to die by one another’s hands.

  
Cole runs his fingers over her arm; a soothing, stroking motion meant to calm a child. Or perhaps a loved one.

  
“I promise you, I will help them all heal if I can. But first, you have to let me help you.”

  
He meets her eyes, and she feels him gently prod open her mind, despite her attempts to resist him.

  
“The air is cool but fragrant, birds I have no name for calling in the distance. His hand sits warm and strong against my back. I am safe here with him. He could protect me from anything, guide me through anything. I do love him.”

  
Hot tears slide from her eyes and her fingers dig for purchase against his arm.

  
“Please, Cole, no. Not that.”

  
She pinches her eyes closed and tries to turn her face to hide her pain from him.

  
“But you were happy,” Cole whispers, prodding more insistently against her mind.

  
“Yes, I was.”

  
She pulls the tethers of her will around her mind, locking that light and joy deep back inside of her where she can ignore it. She tries to fill the gap with memories of friends and companions wounded or dying after her battles against him.

  
Her desire to protect and save those that died in her arms attempts to drown out her love for him.

  
She has been trying so hard since that unfortunate day.

  
She feels monstrous when she thinks about the love locked up inside her.

  
What would they think if they could see how well planted it remains in their illustrious leader?

  
Cole holds her tighter and looks briefly out across to the battle again.

  
His fingers travel up and pet back the sweat and blood near her hairline. She feels him prod deeper. The intent and determination clear as he roots around in her mind.  
Her eyes close again. The thrum of her heart beating throughout her body is getting softer. But she feels Cole latch onto her. Ground her. She should not pass with this still inside her.

  
“His crime; so perverse, so abusive. The clan sneers and bear their teeth at him as he stands before the Keeper to face judgment. All would see him dead or tortured for what he has done. I hiss when he glances at me. How dare he look into the eyes of the one he has so intimately harmed. I want his blood, his hide. Wrath consumes, conjures, conquers me, and I lash out screaming at him. I am taken away, left guarded in an aravel until after the judgment.”

  
She opens her eyes in confusion. She knows this memory… it is hardly of fond times.

  
“The clan will not look me in the eye. I go to find the Keeper, wanting to see his corpse but finding only some spilled blood and closed off eyes. ‘Where is he?’ I ask. ‘Gone’ she replies. The Keeper paints his name with his own blood into the runes of a spell, and I know he is not dead. Tears spring from my eyes. Betrayal snakes out through my core. ‘How could you?!’ I scream ‘You are weak! You are supposed to protect us. I do not care that you loved him, you are supposed to protect us!’ I sob, and the Keepers sits before me, letting me cry and shake before searching my face. Looking for something, seeing through me, and then back into me.”

  
She shivers as the perfect memory of her rage and pain passes over her. But Cole continues.

  
“The Keeper places a hand on my head, and I flinch away from it. ‘One day, you will protect and care for our people, as that is our duty. It often comes with great sacrifice and pain. But just as importantly’, Keeper lifts my head, and I meet her eyes, brimmed with tears, red and filled with such a vast sorrow that my breath catches, ‘you must also learn to protect and care for your heart.’ She embraces me, and I let her, clinging on just as tightly as she. ‘He will never harm another soul, and none will ever see him again, but I can not ask it of my heart to see his death by my hand.’ I close my eyes and feel her love for the man that so many despise. Shuddering, shaking, sighing. I cannot ask her for more. I do not want to ask her for more. She does not deserve to suffer more for what he did.”

  
Her eyes are open, but the tears have stopped as the empathy she’d held for her Keeper seeps into the deep cuts of pain that traverse across her soul.

  
Cole slowly lowers his forehead down to hers and closes his eyes when they meet. She breathes him in, and she smells the spices and incense that burned in her Keepers hut that night as they sat talking for hours, comforting one another.

  
“Forgive,” he whispers. Commanding, suggesting, and pleading all at once.

  
She is still. Her body tense as though waiting for something.

  
“I do love him.”

  
Her body lets out a deep sigh that takes her final breath and sings it out across the void. She slips into warmth and a heartbeat, not unlike the sound of her Keepers as they’d embraced.

  
Cole closes her eyelids and presses a kiss to her cheek, thanking her one more time for being such a caring and loving friend to him. For helping him to help.

  
He looks out across the field, seeing and feeling, sensing the air for any calls of pain that particularly pluck at him. He feels one. But it can wait.

  
He looks back down near the mountain, the hidden camp radiating worry, pain, and death but also a gleaming resolve and fortitude.

  
At his approach, Cullen’s pain at seeing him carrying her almost makes him stay. But he must tend to the other. He will come to heal Cullen later. The commander’s strength will see him through until then.

  
But he does look back, only once, to press the memory of her serene face into his mind.

  
Cole moves swiftly over the battleground, ending the pain of those that will not take long. He can only spend so much time with them as his destination is growing weaker by the second.

  
He slits the throats of the two left behind. Retrieving and returning, rescuing. They had intended to save, but now that she can no longer fight, Cole must fight for her.

Cole does not see him yet; armor covered in blood and filth.

But he feels his pain, radiating out like the sun. A very old pain plucked and placed in the wrong time. Pain seeming to sift like sand as it pours out of him.

The arrows sticking up from a body shudder beneath his gaze as the shape takes a gasping breath.

Cole smiles down at his friend.

“Hello, Solas.”


End file.
